Rail Roads
by Mendori-chan
Summary: So long, so long… It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten her name. Second story up
1. Chapter 1

Summary: He left her letters on the rail tracks. And he waits for them to burst free one last time as the incoming train proceeds. (Two-Part Story)

Inspired by the excerpt of the poem below.

You Who Never Arrived

_You, Beloved, who are all  
the gardens I have ever gazed at,  
longing. An open window  
in a country house-- , and you almost  
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.  
Streets that I chanced upon,--  
you had just walked down them and vanished.  
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors  
were still dizzy with your presence and,  
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.  
Who knows? Perhaps the same  
bird echoed through both of us  
yesterday, separate, in the evening... _

_Rainer Maria Rilke_

_

* * *

  
_

The stationary weighs a thousand pounds in my pocket. I bury my left hand inside and clutch the paper tightly, and I feel the remnants of her handwriting burn my skin.

I memorize every word written there, every sentence, every scratch mark made by her carelessness. There is a torn edge on its upper right portion. I memorize the slightly crooked letter "T" each time she writes my name. I've opened and closed it so many times that it has left white fold marks everywhere—crumpled, almost indiscernible words now.

Where I am standing, I care less to know. My stomach feels twisted, and my chest is heavy. But I am here, and I cannot turn back anymore.

Slowly, like an old man, I pull out that very first letter she sent to me from the safety of my pocket. I look at it one last time—just one last, long look—before I place it together with her other letters. I've arranged them into a pile on the ground.

I am crouched low, alone in the cold spring afternoon, as I continue to look at her letters with silent heaviness. They lie quietly between two rail tracks, snugly holding onto each other for dear life. After all, they all came from one person. Perhaps that is what brings us together; my being unable to detach from these inanimate objects because they are the last remaining link to her. To that other life.

It always amazes me as I equate this fairly thick pile of letters to my _own_ life. They have been there, the witnesses to my demise. And yet, they were the reasons why I grew into the man I am.

But today… today I would have to let them go. All those years of seamlessly waiting for her.

I stroke the green stationary with my finger—in affection, perhaps. In goodbye, more so. And I stand up like the man I should be, ignore the fact that I've left my heart in between these two rail tracks, and take my place behind the safety bars.

The sky is letting out a low rumble. The sound shakes the ground a little, and I think that today wouldn't be any more fitting for release if the rain didn't come. So I wait. I wait patiently… Years of waiting, of searching, has made me exceedingly patient. One…maybe two hours pass before those cold rain drops start to pour down.

But I still stand and wait, just watching the letters she sent me get drenched in the downpour. If someone asked me if this were to happen a year ago, I would say I'd go and shield those letters with my life. But now, I am strong enough to watch them perish as nature had planned long ago. It was only I who kept opposing, for fate had to be my enemy. And any right-minded person would know that fighting with fate is a battle lost from the start.

It takes another hour before the warning alarms start to signal the coming of a train. It has gotten quite dark, so the pieces of paper all just look like white smudges on a black canvas. But now… now it will only be a matter of time.

The safety bars have started to fall into place, blocking the intersection of the rail path from the main road. I take a step back, realizing for the first time how extremely wet I've become from the rain. But I am past exhaustion, past vanity, past all care to think about myself as I could see the soft flickering headlights of the incoming train.

For a fleeting moment—like a quiet whisper—my muscles tense in readiness to grab and save the link that might lead me back to her one day. But I suppress it. I hold it in, and force myself to watch as the speeding train comes into full view.

The papers literally burst from the ground and explode into shreds and pieces. Even in the dark, I had never seen something so beautiful that I cry out her name one last time against the loud passage of the train, against the pounding of the rain, against time that I've found and lost so soon.

Then I disappear and take flight on the remnants of my life, towards a place far from all the shattered letters and the lies and the broken promises of my youth.

I run. And I run, headed nowhere, wanting nothing but to forget.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

_I do not need_

_to see you appear;_

_being born sufficed for me_

_to lose you a little less._

Rainer Maria Rilke

* * *

_for Kaj-Nrig_

_Thank you for waiting. If not for your reminder that I had to finish writing Takaki's story, I would not have compelled myself to do it and this would just be rotting in ffnet. For that, I am grateful. This is for you! :)_

_

* * *

  
_

The clouds are slowly moving away, and the road still smells of rain. In the distance, the sky softens and turns pale with the sun barely visible in the horizon. It was on this day that we were to meet at our promised place.

I don't know why I'm back where I started, and certainly any of this won't make me feel any more comfortable. But I am here, and I am now.

I walk towards the station, where she gave me that warm meal after the longest journey I had taken in what seems like a lifetime ago. But today, it is spring and the world is not as cold as how I remember it.

I look around the room after shutting the sliding doors behind me. It is dimly lit, with the furnace in the middle emanating its warmth throughout the room. The paint on the walls has cracked away with time, and I wonder how old I've grown since I was here.

I sit, alone but not as empty as before. It takes me a while to suppress the incoming thoughts, the inevitable pang of pain as the memories start to creep into view like a drop of rain trickling on skin. But a while is not as long and as arduous as it seems, and before I know it, I have my breathing pattern steady again.

In a wave of relief, I find myself bending over with my hands on my face. Chuckling slightly, I tell myself, "What is wrong with me…"

I didn't come here for this. I came for a different reason… a reason that even I cannot fully understand.

I came to see someone—a person I have not even met before. It is a wistful, pensive longing, yet I found it strangely necessary.

The very first time I saw her was three months ago…

-

_I had my briefcase on my lap while I was staring out the train's window. The scenery goes by in a blur, and the speed of the train makes a rushing and rumbling sound. It is comforting, this subtle state of chasing after time. _

_Time in which we cannot chase must be preserved; we do this in a way of traveling in vehicles that transcends its boundaries. We compensate, we struggle to hold onto what we cannot take back to lose it a little less._

_I am on this train for one reason: to attend a convention a few more miles ahead of Tochigi. After weeks of debating with myself, I eventually conceded. After all, what was I running from?_

_Then, as if from a dream, I realize that the train is about to pass by the station of which I am particularly anxious of. My heart accelerates because I see a small crowd waiting for the arrival of the train. Would she be there? Would she step in?_

_When the train stops and its doors open at the other end, I catch myself looking for a familiar face among a sea of strangers as they rush inside. _

_But I see no one. All of them look the same._

_I close my eyes for a while until sometime that the train returns to its normal momentum of travel. And that is when it happens…_

_When I look up to focus my attention back outside the window, I see a field bursting with yellow flowers in the distance. It looks like a field of buttery gold, melted and shining in the late afternoon sun. Then I see a small figure—barely visible—staring up at the train in which I am sitting in. _

_A little girl, almost drowning in a sea of yellow flowers, is watching the train pass. Although I cannot be sure, her expression strikes me as a deep longing that mirrors my own. The moment is so powerful, so _poignant_ that I cannot tear my eyes off from her gaze._

_She then whips her head forward and she _runs_… she runs in an effort to chase the passing train. Her hair is black and it is bouncing against the yellow glow as she clumsily makes her way through the thick forest of flowers. _

_My view is cut off by an overgrowth of trees. And the moment is gone. It was then when I realized that I have been holding my breath. I inhale, and it feels like I was the one drowning in that yellow, yellow sea… _

-

After that day, I began to wonder who the little girl was. And perhaps I could go to that field of flowers and see how the train would look from there…

On my way back to Tokyo after the convention, I rode the same train and once again, I spotted the little girl—all alone in the vast open space—chase after it. I had wondered if this was something she did out of curiosity, that if she somehow overtakes the train, a new realization would unfold.

Then I push away the thought. _Silly_, I tell myself. A child would not think that way yet.

Now I am gathering my knapsack, which I have placed on a chair beside me, and stand up. Three months have passed, and the memory is still so vivid in my mind that I was compelled to return here.

I take my leave from the station and head on the dirt road. I have only been here during winter, so it surprises me that the empty landscape once filled with snow is transformed into a blanket of life; the grass has grown and cicadas are singing, announcing the slow approach of night.

I am wearing a black long-sleeved sweatshirt, so the cold does not hit me until I reach a kilometer away from the station when a gust of wind presses on my face. It has gotten a bit dark now though the sun was still above. Probably it was still past five in the afternoon.

When I reach the top of a small hill, I could finally see what I was looking for: the fields of yellow flowers. Now they have become a light shade of orange, probably transforming as the season is about to change. I am mildly aware by this time that some emotion was brewing inside of me… something nostalgic.

But I trudge onwards, and already their sweet scent calms my nerves. A few minutes later, I am on the edge of the field where thousands of those flowers have grown. They now stand at the level of my shoulders, so only my head is popping out. The rest of my body is wrapped up in their depth.

For a moment, I close my eyes and immerse myself into the sounds of nature. The wind is playing with my hair, and the quiet breeze makes the rustling of leaves into a melody. It is beautiful—to be drowned in this sea of nothingness and just be alone in solitude.

Then I remember the little girl. I do not know how it happens, but my eyes turn eastward almost automatically, yielding a scene about a kilometer away.

It stood so alone that it was hard to miss, that enormous Sakura tree standing in the middle of the vast open space. It is situated on top of a swelling land, with its light pink flowers visible from this distance.

I squint my eyes a little more, only to find a lone figure sitting on one of its huge roots. The sunlight is making her hair turn into different shades, and immediately I know it is the girl I saw running after the train.

_Should I go and talk to her? _I ask myself. Certainly it would be very frightening for a little girl to be alone with a stranger.

I pace around in what little space I have, and this seems to have caught her attention. I know this because she stands up on the Sakura's root and looks at my direction.

For a moment, I am afraid. Of what? I'm not quite sure…

Then it dawns in on me that the little girl I saw then was quite smaller than the person standing in the distance. From this perspective, she looks taller, more slender and there is an air of familiarity with her gaze.

It takes me a while to realize that I've stopped breathing.

My knees are numb. Why has the sun on my back suddenly become cold?

We stand there for a moment, and there are no memories that resurface. Just emotions… I can't begin to put them into words, because they rush in as fragments of something else.

Until such a time that this woman averts her gaze to her left, as if responding to a call, I realize the significance of the Sakura tree on which she stands.

The memories come as a fierce snarl that my knees start to give way. I hold onto a shrub for balance.

_This isn't possible_, I repeat to myself. _It must be someone else._

I draw in several ragged breaths before looking up again. She now has two other companions: a child and a tall man. They seem to be pulling her arm down the other side of the hill. But this woman gestures for them to stop, and waves her hand for them to go on ahead.

The man picks up the child—which I could now distinguish as the little girl who had come here—and puts her on his broad shoulders. They saunter carefully down the hill, out of sight.

This woman takes a few steps to follow through with them. But… she stops suddenly and whirls around to look back at my direction.

Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she inclines her head… and I understand: this is how she used to smile at me.

Even though I cannot see her face, just the outline of her silhouette, I am certain that there is no other woman in the world who would smile at me that way. The wind carries her warmth, but it makes me shiver.

I mimic her gesture, only I did not carry with it the smile it was meant to send. Then she turns back gradually—as if in reluctance—to catch up with the two. She disappears from my view.

I stand there for a little longer. I am in awe.

One more deep breath makes its way into my lungs before I am able to feel the unsteady rattle as it escapes my lips. Then I realize that I have never seen her so clearly. I've never taken notice of the years. They've slipped by so quickly that I do not remember why I am here. Why all this is supposed to hurt. Why I don't feel anything now, despite the cold wind of the afternoon.

Like a longing, or a nursery rhyme you can't seem to recall from a childhood so many lifetimes ago—the feelings are elusive.

I turn back and trudge down the same path leading to the station. The pebbles crunch upon each step I make. I hear a quiet rumble from far behind me.

Then, in a burst of an instant, a train passes by about a kilometer away from where I am standing. For some reason, the movement is so fast and so captivating that as I stare at it, I cannot help but smile. It radiates like warmth, but somehow, hurts like a phantom limb.

Instead of running, I walk… for once, I am not in a rush of catching up with time. Let it catch up with me.

So long, so long… It's been so long that I've forgotten her name.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the long narration. T__T I wish I could put some dialogue, but this is Takaki's story. I didn't want to screw it up. To further clarify the ending is something I cannot do. It will mean different to many people, and I'd like to leave it like that. You interpret it yourselves, because I have my own view of it. :)

For the fields of flowers… it's a disclaimer scene. Please watch the video of **Motohiro Hata** entitled "**Niji Ga Kieta**." It's so beautiful that it's the inspiration for this whole story. Look it up on YouTube; you won't regret it.


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